What did Thomas Jefferson and the members of the Second Continental Congress mean when they wrote “the pursuit of Happiness” into the United States Declaration of Independence? And why is pursuing happiness so important that Jefferson and his fellow Founding Fathers included it in the Declaration of Independence’s most powerful statement of the new United States’ ideals? 

Jeffrey Rosen, the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center and a law professor at George Washington University Law School, joins us to investigate and answer these questions with details from his book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. 

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/394

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 061: The Retirement of George Washington

🎧 Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances

🎧 Episode 117: The Life and Ideas of Thomas Jefferson

🎧 Episode 145: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution

🎧 Episode 150: Abigail Adams: Revolutionary Speculator

🎧 Episode 203: Alexander Hamilton

🎧 Episode 231: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family

🎧 Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin

🎧 Episode 307: History and the American Revolution

🎧 Episode 377: Phillis Wheatley & the Playwright

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